Cheap flatbed scanner that isn't garbage and works with Monterey?

[Danfango]

Does anyone know anything suitable with this specification?

Needs to be used for photo archival (about 2500 prints) so anything 1200dpi+ which doesn't emit the horrid cross hatching my MFP HP does would do the trick.

The Canon LIDE 300 seems to be prevalent here but apparently doesn't work with Monterey. Grr.

Don't want to spend a lot of money on this as it's another lump of crap I don't want to haul around forever.

 

[jz0309]

Does anyone know anything suitable with this specification?

Needs to be used for photo archival (about 2500 prints) so anything 1200dpi+ which doesn't emit the horrid cross hatching my MFP HP does would do the trick.

The Canon LIDE 300 seems to be prevalent here but apparently doesn't work with Monterey. Grr.

Don't want to spend a lot of money on this as it's another lump of crap I don't want to haul around forever.

if it were me, I'd look into a professional service to scan the photos. While the cost is likely higher than a scanner, how much is your own time worth to you? You'll need a lot of time to do the scanning yourself ...
I've done this myself ~ 15+ years ago, thousands of slides and photos. Last year inherited ~2000 slides, I had the scanned by a professional service.
I don't own a scanner anymore, I am using an app on my phone, for documents, works just as good

 

[Danfango]

Looked at that and I have the problem that they are all in albums and are labelled. I would need to remove them all and then work out where they all belong afterwards which would a nightmare. Also the cost is somewhat prohibitive.

Regarding my personal time, I have a lot of dead time sitting there in endless Zoom meetings so I want to do something productive instead of inspecting the insides of my eyelids.

I use my iPhone or my HP MFP office laser (as it has duplex document feeder) to scan documents already. That's fine but absolutely no good for photos.

 

[mikeboss]

Canon CanoScan LiDE 400 works just fine (does AirScan over USB).

 

[Danfango]

Canon CanoScan LiDE 400 works just fine (does AirScan over USB).

Thanks will look into that. Can actually pick one of them up tomorrow.

Embarrassingly though I think I may have been slating my HP scanner a bit hard. Looks like the issues I have with image quality aren't from the scanner but the original prints I'm scanning. They look like they were printed on something which used pretty poor rasterisation. You can't see this if you look at the photo directly unless you use a loupe but it shows up pretty badly in a 1200dpi scan.

The HP may suffice yet. I will scan 10 more random photos that pre-date digital printing and see what happens!

 

[jz0309]

If you’re going that route, I’d try 600dpi and compare…

 

[Danfango]

If you’re going that route, I’d try 600dpi and compare…

That’s a good idea. Will try that.

 

[dwig]

If you’re going that route, I’d try 600dpi and compare…

+1
If the original has any sort of screening or "pixelization" then it's likely that there will be an interference pattern produced at some scanning resolution. I've seen this frequently when scanning photos done on the ancient "silk" texture paper, on offset printed pieces with halftone screens, digitally prints where the printer's dot patterns are resolved, and even when scanning very grainy film negatives. When this occurs the fix is to scan at different resolutions, either higher or lower. Often it only takes a modest change in the scanning resolution.

Also, keep in mind that classic chemical optically printed photographic prints only resolve around 200-300 ppi (color) or 300-400 (B&W) at best. Some digitally printed color prints may be slightly higher, but 600ppi will record all of the print's available information in all cases, except when an interference pattern occurs.